President speaks at Maruti

Hon.Presidents speech at Maruti is one of the most logically structured talk I have come across. Maruti is no 2 in productivity and road map to become no 1 includes a heavy dose of investment in R&D. And Maruti is not short of cash, as the Hon.President pointed out - they had Rs1500 crore profit in 2006-7. Will they bite the bullet and be known as innovators in automobiles. It probably depends on the strategic intent of owners as exhibited by Hyundai a decade back with much smaller base of market and resources.

Assocham conference on Automation and Robotics

Assocham conference on Automation and Robotics held on 26th May brought together several experts working in this field. Systemantics based in Bangalore is one of the few Indian firms in this field, offering Pick and Place robots, Dr Jagannath Raju is Director of this firm. Rajesh Ananthakrishnan of IITB promoted Reflex Technologies Pvt Ltd ,Mumbai offering custom based automation and robotics projects. Much more activity is evident on research front with Prof Amarnath from IIT Mumbai, Prof Susmit Sen from IIT Kanpur, Dr SK Saha from IIT Delhi and Prof K Madhava Krishna from IIIT Hyderabad grooming several young students in this discipline. Anuj Sehgal is man behind India's only NGO in this field `Intelligent Unmanned Robotics Society'. Defence is a major player with CAIR doing pioneering work.

Motilal Oswal Venture Capital Advisors Private Limited (MOVCAPL)

Motilal Oswal Venture Capital Advisors Private Limited (MOVCAPL) , a subsidiary of Mumbai-based Motilal Oswal Financial Services, is investing in existing SMES. This private equity fund recently raised $42 million of a proposed $100 million. The deal size will be around $5 million . Read the interview at India Knowledge Wharton.

2007 Taipei International Invention Show and Technomart

Invitation received from Thomas Chang, Director,Taipei World Tradee Centre, Mumabai, inviting participation by Indian Innovators in the 2007 Taipei International Invention Show and Technomart to be held from September 27 to September 30 2007.

Inventors from across the world will use this venue to show their latest and most exciting breakthroughs for the innovation and research in the potential industries like technology, High Technology, Fiber Optics, Machinery, Construction, Safety Equipment, Environmental Protection, Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare, Transport and Communications, Household Electronic Appliances, Hardware, Agriculture, Food, Textiles, and Optoelectronics, Precision Machinery, Materials and Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Technology and much more.
Innovators interested in participation can contact me or call TWTC at 022- 22163074-77.

School in a Box

`School in a Box' is a software product developed by start-up, Pefect future, New delhi, promoted by Microsoft engr Tarun Anad. At Rs 15/- this may find wide acceptance among schools- another innovation for Bottom Of the Pyramid market from Inda. New york times carrys a story on the start-up.

Matsushita Buys India's Anchor

Forbes reports that Matsushita Electric Works, a subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. had bought 80% of leading Indian electrical equipment maker Anchor from the Mumbai-based Shah family for $480 million. The deal is important for several reasons:

1. Anchor manufactures simple products like electric switches, though Matsushita markets electrical wiring and related items in Japan, how it fares in India selling such a low unit products remain to be seen.

2. The products Anchor makes in India were once reserved for small scale industries and Anchor is credited with creating brands in an otherwise commodity market.

3. Will Matsushita ever be able to sell these low unit price products under its own name? Despite its name and resources , success in India eluded this Japanese top of the mind recall brand owner. National and Panasonic once dominated Indian grey market which disappeared with liberalisation and globalisation.

4. The deal is indicative of strengths of small scale industries that focused on design innovations and may be despair of Japanese firms who lost the race to Koreans in India .

Sunil Shaunak

Fortune's list of 24 top innovators include Sunil Shaunak , Professor of infectious diseases, London University's Imperial College, developing medicines for a fraction of what Big Pharma spends. His small biotech, PolyTherics, created a new hepatitis C medicine, which will undergo final testing this year. License was granted to Shanta biotechnics, a price warrior credited to bringing down prices of vaccines to a fraction in India.

Diaonics Automation

Diaonics Automation is a small unit promoted by design engineer Prashant. It has successfully developed wireless fire alarm, smoke/ heat detector etc. Detector has a monitoring LED that operates about every 16 seconds per cycle (flash) during stand-by status. When there is smoke, detector will issue fire signal after 16 consecutive times of confirmation on every 0.3 seconds. If any dust causes flashing or in consecutive signal, it will back to normal status after 32 confirmations.

Boron Rubbers Ltd

Boron Rubber is effective for shielding thermal neutrons and to get over the restrictions on supply, BARC supported a project to develop neutron shielding material for the neutron beam guide and other instruments. The project was assigned to Prof. R.V. Mehta and Prof. R.V. Upadhyay and Dr. G.M. Sutaria of the Department of Physics, Bhavnagar University. Successful development led industrialist Deepak Doshi to start this venture.

Succession of standards

I have referred to standards in my previous posts of December 6th, August 25th & August 15th 2006. Ken Krechmer in his paper `The Entrepreneur and Standards' which recd 2nd prize at IEC Centenary challenge , gives a historic account of standards and a peep into the future, `adaptable systems'. Adaptable systems occur when autonomous elements of a network can identify, negotiate and select among different capabilities to implement the most desired compatibility.

Orizon Technologies

Another successful start-up in RFID space. Incubated at NirmaLabs, a private incubator, based in Ahmedabad, mentored by Venkat Rajendran ex CDOT & co-founder of Deccanet Designs Pvt Ltd, promoted by two young graduates from NIT, Trichy Prashant and Palaniappan.

Multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNIC)

One of the major initiatives of government that created opportunities for local manufacturing is MNIC proposal.The main purpose of this project is to provide a credible individual identification system and simultaneous use for several multifarious socio-economic benefits and transactions within and outside the Government. This would form the basis of more efficient e-Governance. The system envisages preparation of a computerized National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), providing a unique National Identity Number (NIN) to each citizen of the country and issue of identity cards. The NRIC would be continuously updated by linking it to the registration of births and deaths carried out under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969.
The Government has decided to conduct a pilot for the MNIC Project in selected areas of 13 districts in thirteen states/union territories in the country. ECIL is setting up a dedicated facility to manufacture MNIC at Tirupath.

MIC Electronics goes public

Mic Electronics ltd was promoted by Ramana rao, who had his engg graduation from Andhra Univerity, ME from PSG and PhD from JNU. Starting as a lecturer he started his entrepreneurial activties by developing moving display boards for railway stations, bus stands and became leader with LED display boards. A pioneering effort by a technocrat. For the financial year ended June 2006, the company reported revenues of 104.41 crore and a net profit of Rs 15.59 crore.

MIC Electronics Ltd is tapping the capital markets with a public issue for 51,00,000 shares at a price band of Rs 129 to Rs 150, to raise between Rs 65.79 crore and Rs 76.50 crore.

End of nuisance patents

Granting patents liberally in US created a situation that every successful product invites demands for royalty payments or threat of infringement from the patent owners. See paper on `covering patent infringement risks in technology transfer'. The statistics are revealing- in 2004, 150,000 patents were granted but lawsuits filed exceeded 300,000. Based on recent Supreme Court Judgment ` KSR INT’L CO. v. TELEFLEX INC'. Economic Times gives out the hope that many such patent claims would hence forth be considered obvious and not granted. (source: Economic Times)

The next 4 billion BOP market

Report on `The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid' was released on 26th April at CII-WRI function with presentation by author Allen L. Hammond. As per the report Indian BOP market size is in Trillions. There are discussions and debates on this BOP concept. One thing is clear, this market demands not only price & delivery innovations but also product innovations. TePP supported nearly 200 innovations for Bottom of Pyramid market. Interested?

Researh paper by school children

A research paper `Theoretical optimisation of constitution of alloys by decoding their densities' was published in `Materials letters' 61, 2007(2956-2960). What is remarkable about it- authors are students- not IIT - from S.S. Children’s Academy, Moradabad (Ms. Pratibha, student of Class XII and Ms. Bharati, Student of Class X). They have overcome several hurdles, skepticism is the main one, but perseverance of their mentor Dr BC Rathore paid off in the end. Source of inspiration for the school children- Hon.President of India, he made BIS to consider it as a test method.
The proposed Model successfully generates two different series of probable compositions for a given density of alloys. The model may be employed to optimise constitution of multi-component alloy even without the prior knowledge of constituent metal.

China’s 15 Year Science and Technology Plan

China’s “National Medium- and Long-Term Program for Scientific and Technological Development” (2006-2020) is more commonly known as the 15 Year Plan for Science and Technology. President Hu Jintao, supported by scientific leaders in the Chinese government, introduced the plan in January 2006. Its ultimate goal is to make China a preeminent power in science and technology by expanding its capacity to create “indigenous innovation.” Annual investment - over $100 billion. “indigenous innovation" means “independent, self-reliant, and indigenous” and combining three distinct elements: yuanshi (original, or genuinely new); jicheng (integrated, or combining existing technologies in new ways); and yinjin (assimilated, or making improvements to imported technologies). Americans are concerned and American Electronics Association has come with this report.

Any concern in our country?